Mounting Inventory Pulls Manhattan Home Prices Near 3-Year Low

(Bloomberg) -- Prospective Manhattan home buyers had plenty of options in November, and their wallets were thankful for it.

The average price of condos, co-ops, townhouses and single-family homes on the market dropped 3.3 percent from a year earlier to $1.1 million, according to the November 2018 StreetEasy Market Reports released Wednesday. That’s the sharpest year-on-year decline since February 2009 and takes the price almost to the level of October 2015.

Inventory has been rising for months, and about 1,400 new homes hit the market in November, an 18 percent increase from the year before, the second-biggest increase since the financial crisis. The biggest increase was in the previous month, when homes on the market jumped by 21 percent.

“The combination of a ton of new homes on the market and potential buyers holding out for better deals has shifted the market dynamic in Manhattan further in favor of buyers,” StreetEasy Senior Economist Grant Long wrote in a company blog post Wednesday.

Sales volume rose 2.8 percent in November -- unusual for Autumn, when they tend to slow. That “should come as encouraging news to those looking to sell their homes, but it’s too early to tell whether this will be an enduring trend,” Long said.

Sales prices gained in Brooklyn and Queens. In Brooklyn, they rose 1.6 percent from a year earlier and in Queens, 4.8 percent, helped by Amazon.com Inc.’s decision to place a new office campus in the neighborhood of Long Island City.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justina Vasquez in New York at jvasquez57@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Debarati Roy at droy5@bloomberg.net, Rob Urban, Josh Friedman

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